Bits and Pieces I Use

A good workman never blames his tools.

Most people think of musicians and other music industry members as being airy-fairy, absent minded, irresponsible, lazy and a general waste of space.
But most people like music.
So......they like the product but have no respect for the people who craft it?

Now, I am NOT referring to The Beatles, Lady Gaga and the like.  They don't participate in over 80% of the work that goes into creating radio fodder.
How many of you can list the various roles involved in the creation of modern music?

With most of my musical offerings I must assume all of these roles.
Therefore I must utilise all the various tools required.
But, which tool is the most important??
Me, silly!

Anyway................
To begin with I need a medium to record onto.
This being the digital age I hardly find it necessary any more to slave a cassette player to another cassette player and using a pile of tapes and use an extremely confusing and time consuming method just to record my musical creations over many tracks using many instruments (yes, like many people this is how I learnt to multi-track record.  Trial and error and many curse words were my syllabus).

My DAW experience started with Cakewalk version 'something-old' (my first experience with midi editing and sequencing), rolled onto ProTools (live multi track recording is an interesting challenge) but I did away with that stuff which cost as much as the computer running it (almost) to purchase and I still enjoy all their benefits!

http://www.reaper.fm/ 
I currently find this piece of software is fulfilling all my needs.  It is a simple user interface that uses a layout familiar to all sound recording enthusiasts.  It is fast, simple and dosn't come burdened with hundreds of 'free extra's and 'loops' which are no good to anyone with half an inch of musical talent/taste.  It's functionality and after sales support is 2nd to 0.  I also have not any troubles with hardware compatibility, yay!   I have to thanks Steve for pointing this beauty out to me (even though he is now a GarageBand fanboy.... well nobody is perfect I guess, hey Steve? haha ).

I find many times when people are approaching specialists pieces of equipment or software that they never read the manual??
Why do Australians have such an aversion to reading a manual??
So much can be gleamed from spending the relatively small amount of time with these volumes of text and oh so many tricks can be devised for future reference.   Terminology, history of the subject, manufacturers recommendations and the like. Who doesn't want these things???  

Which brings me to another point.

Pre-sets.  Pre-sets.  Pre-sets.

How did I learn to set an EQ to mix a backing vocalist into the background of a mix or depth and clarity to the jumble of noise that emanates from a Jazz Bigband's brass section??
I studied pre-set EQ patterns in DAW plugins.
I studied with my eyes and my ears.
I studied with my I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N.
I studied with my hands.  I grabbed those dials (and with my speakers or headphones turned down slightly) I  turned things up, I turned things down, I shifted frequencies and I stood on my head while doing starjumps in time to the music I was mixing.

So don't palm off presets and don't think that just because you went and paid top dollar for a DAW that came with all the trimmings that it is the best thing for the job.
Train your ears, open your mind and be creatively constructive (not arty-farty) and then anything, including your slightly below average Nokia phone, is the best thing for the job!